


Scavenger's Luck

by incognitajones



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Jakku, MayThe4th Treat, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 07:24:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18686827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/incognitajones
Summary: Rey grinned in anticipation as she hopped into her boots and grabbed her toolkit and rappelling gear. Today was going to be a good day.





	Scavenger's Luck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



It was the drop of the keening winds that woke Rey. Silence rang in her ears as she struggled out of her hammock and cracked the hatch open cautiously, braced for sand to flow inside. But in the grainy pre-dawn light of the day after a sandstorm, all she saw were low ripples stretching to the horizon. A new horizon: the dim masses of faraway hills had shifted overnight, like behemoths rolling in their sleep.

Sandstorms were a scavenger’s best friend, moving dunes to reveal new wrecks and open up previously unreachable sections of old ones. Rey grinned in anticipation as she hopped into her boots and grabbed her toolkit and rappelling gear. Today was going to be a good day.

Her optimism was rewarded. She hadn’t even had to stop for a water break before the first glint of metal she saw in the rising sun turned out to be the tip of an X-wing’s laser cannon protruding from a new hollow scoured in the sand. After a quick, cautious scan for anyone else approaching, Rey used her staff to probe for the rest of the buried ship. Her luck held: most of it was only a few centimetres deep.

Alliance ships were rare compared to the innumerable Imperial wrecks on Jakku, but not unknown—still, Rey had never discovered a pristine one before. Sleek and stripped-down, X-wing fighters didn’t have a lot of salvageable parts, but sometimes they held other prizes...

And sometimes, the dead.

She steeled herself to brush the sand off the cockpit, working backward from the nose. But both the canopy and the ejector seat were gone, meaning the pilot had probably ditched before the crash. 

Then she uncovered a helmet jammed in the corner of the cockpit.

Rey didn’t understand. Why would the pilot have taken their helmet off before ejecting… and if so, how could they have survived? But when she took the helmet in her hands and felt its scuffed white plastic warm under her fingertips, somehow, she knew they had lived. 

She plonked it on her head—it slid so far down that the eyepiece squashed her nose flat—and blinked as the scratched yellow plexiglass filtered the rising sun to a bearable glow. She wished she could wear it scavenging, but heatstroke would soon follow even if it were the proper size for her head.

She took it off and traced the yellow firebird on it with her fingertips. Underneath the symbol was a name she spelled out carefully, letter by letter: R - Æ- H. She blinked. _That’s me!_ It was a sign; this find had been meant for her. _I’m here. They’ll come back for me. I just have to wait._

Re-energized, she dug through the rest of the cockpit and her grin stretched wider and wider at every find: the communications array, an intact power converter... The survival kit was still there, untouched, with a spare silk parachute packed inside. She could make part of it into a warm quilt and still have plenty left over to trade. 

It was a cache of treasure. In the end she salvaged multiple components that would help her build the speeder she’d been designing in her head for years. And she hauled two nets full of scrap back to Plutt and got more portions for them than she’d ever seen at once. Her luck was still holding. 

She could have traded the helmet too; she thought about it. But instead she took it back to her AT-AT and hung it from a projection on the wall, where it could watch over her.

She talked to it, from time to time, and liked to pretend that Raeh was listening. That she was teaching Rey, giving her advice on how to maneuver her X-wing through battle on her flight simulator.

And on nights when the X'us'R'iia rose and screamed through the air, or pirates were roaming the dunes looking for prey, Rey would bar the door of her home with a rusted metal strut. She would lean against the opposite wall, wrap the silk quilt around her shoulders, and jam the helmet on her head for its comforting weight. Her staff was ready in her hands, braced across her knees. _I’m here. They’ll come back for me. I just have to wait._

She would fall asleep, and dream of flying.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to ensure this piece complies with the extended canon in _Rey's Survival Guide_ , but since I don't own a copy of it, some details may be contradictory.


End file.
